New Arrivals
Sfinge
Following the 40th anniversary edition of Barbara e altri Carella - the classic and hard to find Funk / AOR masterpiece by Enzo Carella - in September, it's now time for a due re-issue of Sfinge, its follow-up released in 1981 whose original edition usually sells on the second-hand market for prices even crazier than those of Barbara... Carella was an Italian singer-songwriter who is best remembered for his 1979 major hit Barbara, which won second prize at the Sanremo Festival. Once again, all t…
Indium
“Too often we describe music using classifications; genres like “jazz,” “experimental,” “avant-garde” are an easy shorthand to relay the rough parameters of the music to another person who may not have heard it. But these words are useful because they’re so vague, and they are most often used when the impression the music makes is equally vague. But when a group makes sounds that move the listener, these terms don’t hold up.
Dry Speed has released a record that is, at turns, futuristic and organ…
2015-2020
Under the production moniker of Material Things, 12th Isle co-founder Stewart Brown unveils a part debut album part compendium of musical collaborations spanning from 2015-2020. Some recordings began as long, one-take improvisations (How's Life, Peckham) spliced together and revisited years later. Others were based upon chance opportunities to record with musicians operating a long way from the parameters of 12th Isle. Cult private-press loner folk guitarist Bob Theil, whose 1982 album So Far co…
Akuma No Uta
*2023 stock* "When I talk about Boris' Akuma no uta , I always relate it to the sampler platter at Friendly's, or any other restaurant. It gives you a taste of everything. From the Sabbath styled doom, to there Earth crushing drone. You even get a portion of MC5 styled noise attacks. And just like the salty deep fried goodness of the sampler platter, you're bound to like at least one of them. Maybe even all of them.After the almost ten minute guitar drone of Intoro subdues you to your chair, th…
Villa Graps
*2023 stock* Released by Apartment Records (aparec028) on 6 January 2010 as an LP pressed on 180 gram vinyl and packaged in a silk screened sleeve with fluorescent artwork. 1st edition of 100 copies on black vinyl; 10-15 with orange lettering on the sleeve, the rest with red lettering. 2nd edition of 100 copies on transparent red vinyl; 47 copies with blue lettering on the sleeve, the rest with blood red lettering.
Recorded Summer 2006.Performed by Kjell Runar Jenssen, Per Gisle Galåen, Lasse Ma…
Zombie
"Zombie: Fela in his life time was never ‘a good bed-fellow’ of the military institution. As a political activist, he believed the army should operate under the mandate of a civil government. If national interest compels the armed forces to intervene in government, the army is obliged to hand over power to a new civil government elected by the people and enjoying their mandate. To do otherwise is to usurp power particularly since a soldier’s duty is not to seek a political mandate. For emphasis …
Yellow Fever
*2023 stock* Fela Kuti deplores the fashion among African women for skin-whitening creams, an example of the post-colonial inferiority complex he believed was holding back the country's development. The song addresses the fashion much as 1973’s “Gentleman” berated African men for adopting European suits and ties. Fela explains that if you catch an “original” fever such as jaundice, you will suffer but, with luck, survive, and your symptoms will fade away. But if you catch an “artificial” (self-i…
J.J.D (Johnny Just Drop!!) - Live!! At Kalakuta Republik
*2023 stock* "Johnny Just Drop is talking about Africans who travel abroad only to return home with new values and mannerisms. Since the advent of colonialism in Africa, the education system left Black people with an inferior perception of their culture. Those who are Western educated, are in the habit of repeating untruths about African traditions and heritage, because the discipline to think and act big has not yet become a part of Africa’s present day academic and intellectual traditions. For…
Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In A Room7 F760
With his first widely available new material in 5 years, Aphex Twin returns with an intricate and melodic addition to his discography. The machines co-opted in production are as complex as the Weirdcore artwork, layering signature sombre ambient chords with intricate drum programming. ‘Blackbox Life Recorder 21f’ marks Aphex Twin’s official and celebrated return to augment our current reality.
Origin Myths
Bobby Lee trades in a wide screen brand of cosmic country-folk, full of space and pawn shop guitars. There are touches of JJ Cale's analogue Americana, the swampy groove of Tony Joe White and Richard Thompson's sinewy, modal guitar work. Amps hum in the warm afternoon sun, kids and dogs snooze on the grass and broken drum machines keep time with the universe... Open sky/scorched earth improvisations recorded to four track tape during the rare moments of solitude afforded by lockdown and early fa…
Fae Transit
*200 copies limited release* Fae Transit is an expedition into a realm of faerie music Sam McLoughlin introduced us to in his contribution to Folklore Tapes’ Swifter than the Moon’s Sphere. If Green and Brown was a sighting of a faerie parade, Fae Transit is a full abduction, a journey through a woodland inhabited by spirits and haunted by the living.
The album is written entirely for harmonium, nylon guitar, hand percussion and dictaphone, with harmonium and finger-plucked guitar continually ex…
La Sorcière de Rochefort-en-Terre
*300 copies limited release* Folklore Tapes first foray into overseas finds them in a rural Breton village known as Rochefort-en-Terre. Once inhabited by the renowned witch Naia, who along with her ‘spirit stick’ familiar ‘Gnami’ cured ills, cursed locals, split in two and crushed hot coals into dust! Naia is a collaboration with Brittany arts group Le Bon Acceuil and features two distinct sonic explorations into the infamous witch, largely based around the article and photography of Charles Gén…
Oto No Hajimari Wo Motomete 4: Shigeru Sato Work
*2023 repress!!* Long out of print the 4th issue of archive series of NHK electronic music studio. Originally, Kosugi's “Catch Wave '71” was included in this issue, but, by a problem between composer and publisher, the CD was cancelled after several days of selling! Eventually, instead of Kosugi, Ranta's “Kagakuhenka” was up for renewed issue.
1. “Divertimento” Keitaro Miho This is a live performance of live percussion instruments and electronically produced percussion instruments. Until the…
'Igginbottom's Wrench
*2023 stock* 'Igginbottom's Wrench is a studio album by the band 'Igginbottom, released in 1969 through Deram Records originally on vinyl only. It has been reissued a number of times (sometimes under the group title of "Allan Holdworth & Friends"), most notably on CD for the first time on 5 March 1989, as well as a remastered edition in 2000 through Angel Air Records with extensive liner notes detailing the band's history. It is one of the first recordings to feature guitarist Allan Holdsworth.
Music Or Not Music
*2023 stock* "Produced by Erick Van Huls, Recreation's sophomore release "Music or not Music" featured 15 tracks, many of them quite short and linked together in a continuing suite arrangement. With all three members sharing creative duties the all-instrumental set simply wasn't the lost classic slice of progressive magic some dealers would have you believe (the fact it was included in one of the Hans Pokora books merely added to the hype). The three members were all quite talented, but the majo…
Rot
** 500 copies. Limited 50th Anniversary Edition: embossed, reverse board, hand numbered, limited edition red vinyl ** There was a particular type of artist who could only have emerged in the legendary early 1970s. Few musicians fit the bill better than Conrad Schnitzler. Revolution, pop art and Fluxus created a climate which engendered unbridled artistic and social development. Radical utopias, excessive experimentation with drugs, and ruthless (in a positive way) transgression of aesthetic fron…
The Drum Is The Shaman's Horse
** Edition of 344. Pressed on 140g black vinyl mastered by James Plotkin ** With the death in 2020 of long-standing occasional third member Peter Stapleton (percussion/electronics), A Handful of Dust has regrouped as the core duo of Alastair Galbraith (violin, guitar, cello, piano, drums) and Bruce Russell (guitar, electronics). This new set of live-to-four-track recordings from January 2022 is the first album to be wholly recorded "in the studio" since 1995's Towards a Soundtrack to the "Anabas…
Always I Gnaw
Heavy Tip-On jacket with large tri-panel insert, gloss film laminate and uncoated paper finishes. Over the past decade Sult has created a thrillingly dynamic and visceral sound world, forging a musical unity while also asserting the radically unique languages of its three core members, Guro Skumsnes Moe (contrabass) and Håvard Skaset (acoustic guitar) from Norway along with Jacob Felix Heule (percussion) based in California. Their raw acoustic improvisations crackle with an energy that makes ind…
August in the Water: Music for Film 1995-2005
Sublime, ethereal minimalism: the first drawing together of Hiroyuki Onogawa’s soundtrack compositions, plotting a decade of music for films by cult filmmaker Gakuryū Ishii. ‘Sequenced into an album by Onogawa himself, this retrospective spans a fertile period of collaboration with Ishii, through soundtracks for three remarkable films — August in the Water (1995), Labyrinth of Dreams (1997), and Mirrored Mind (2005) — where the cinema is texturally and sensually imbued with the spiritual, ambien…
Kip Of The Serenes
*2023 stock* Ireland's answer to the Incredible String Band, Dr. Strangely Strange engaged in the same type of psychedelic acoustic music with folksy arrangements. With traditional instruments like penny whistle, fiddle, harmonium, and mandolin, Dr. Strangely Strange was more solidly rooted in melody and structure than the group's flaky Scottish counterparts. Produced by British modern folk guru Joe Boyd, Kip of the Serenes is built around simple and repetitious melodies occasionally interrupted…